Examining associations between school food environment characteristics and sugar-sweetened beverage consumption among Canadian secondary-school students in the COMPASS study

Abstract

We identified that the school food environment characteristics examined here had little impact on adolescents' days of SSB consumption. While schools should adopt or maintain a comprehensive policy approach to discourage students' SSB intake, population-level interventions focusing on other contexts (e.g. home and community) are needed to complement existing school-based interventions.

Correlates of sugar-sweetened beverages consumption among adolescents

“…party, holidays). Previous studies had already identified the availability of SSB at home (28,48,(57)(58)(59) and school (60) ; having parents (48,58,59,61) and friends (58,62) who consume SSB; the taste of SSB (54) and eating at fast-food restaurants (58) as correlates of SSB consumption among adolescents. The two facilitating factors were an easy access to water (e.g.…”

Changing young people’s food-related behaviour: a socio-ecological perspective

“…It is therefore important that population-level interventions are implemented together with school-based interventions, as recommended by Godin et al . ( 10 ) in this issue.…”

“…Five articles (9)(10)(11)(12)(13) in this issue of Public Health Nutrition highlight a range of issues related to the food environment and educational settings, and it is worthwhile to consider how the results of the different studies could contribute to the ongoing discourse about the food environment in and around schools and how individuals act in and interact with this environment.…”

“…An often-discussed aspect of the school food environment is the implementation of school policies as a vehicle to modify the school food environment to facilitate healthier food choices ( 17 ) . The paper by Godin et al ( 10 ) in this issue provides some evidence that mandatory policies may be more effective than voluntary polices to restrict the availability of sugar-sweetened beverages in public schools. Yet, in this large cohort study in two provinces of Canada, the school environment had little association with the number of days sugar-sweetened beverages were consumed by secondary-school students, although schools in the province with the mandatory school nutrition policy had significantly lower availability of sugar-sweetened beverages.…”

“…The school food environment is but one component of a much larger environment and factors at household level and broader societal environments are likely to have a greater impact on children's food choices. It is therefore important that population-level interventions are implemented together with school-based interventions, as recommended by Godin et al (10) in this issue.…”